


Twilightweaver

by Schmengie



Category: RWBY
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Budding Love, F/F, Light Angst, One Shot, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Doubt, Short
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 08:04:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21491068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schmengie/pseuds/Schmengie
Summary: Yang Xiao Long quietly broods and struggles to manage her persistent traumas after her gravest and most emotional ordeal, but to her, it was all worth it for the girl who rested next to her.
Relationships: Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long
Comments: 5
Kudos: 85





	Twilightweaver

**Author's Note:**

  * For [y8ay8a](https://archiveofourown.org/users/y8ay8a/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Brighter](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12929652) by [y8ay8a](https://archiveofourown.org/users/y8ay8a/pseuds/y8ay8a). 

> This section last updated on **19 November, 2019**
> 
> Short one-shot writ on a whim and without commission or otherwise any prompting, based on what was probably a throwaway idea (tweeted [here](https://twitter.com/y8ay8a/status/1196305505305669632?s=20)) by [y8ay8a](https://archiveofourown.org/users/y8ay8a), whose masterfully expressive style is, incidentally, also the main inspiration. I do not feel as if I compare, but I am nonetheless proud of this as the first non-fiction work I have writ in over a decade.  
  
Music is also a large part of my inspiration. This piece was writ while listening to Swallow the Sun's ["The Crimson Crown"](https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=zEVHFtFUIss&feature=share), more for its mood than its lyrics, which can nonetheless be found [here](https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/Swallow_the_Sun/When_a_Shadow_Is_Forced_into_the_Light/745417).  
  
... Reading them myself, they kind of fit.

The low hum of the Atlesian airship rumbled on gently as its characteristic silver metal shone with the low, yellow-purple gradient of dusk. It had come quickly; even so, most of the ship's vagrant crew had already welcomed the embrace of sleep despite the cold steel.

Not Yang.

Her lilac pierced the steel where her boots rested—though, lost in her brooding, she found but a dull glaze there. She noted not the occasional sloshing of Qrow's flask as he sipped from it, nor Nora’s _incessant_ snoring, nor the faint revving and clicking of Maria's defective digital screens which served as her eyes. On some level, Yang could have understood everyone's apprehension at letting her pilot this crate all the way to Solitas, but the indignant old lady's stubbornness was well-attested by this point.

The tired blonde was too detached and within herself to have afforded half a care.

Her neck ached—complaint of a position too long held. Lilac, refocused, flashed to the impossible, utterly fantastical contrast of pale, milky white maned deep black who slumped next to her in peaceful slumber. The golden one, being so exhausted, only managed a crack of a warm smile, nonetheless belying awe and reverence for the way the flowing stygian depth of Blake’s hair conservatively welcomed the pervasively beautiful gloom of yellows and purples unto itself. She wanted to sink her fingers in to it—even the relatively dull sensation of touch offered by her prosthesis could have processed something so lush—but her mechanical replacement was already engulfed in the life of Blake's hand. Neither girl had wanted to give up the other and though the faunus had composed herself in the face of trauma amid what could well have been Argus' wholesale destruction and slaughter without the timely intervention of Ruby and her silver miracles, she was known for burying things in shadows within shadows. Beacon was far behind them, but despite nearly a year apart, Yang knew her partner better than anyone—and she her. The fallout from that nightmare would hinder them both for many twilights to come.

That horrible, blood-soaked realm of pain and hatred...

The brawler tightly shut her eyes as a sudden, spiteful flash of red sliced itself across her mind, an exasperated breath caught in her throat, and an unforgiving tremor resonated like death-song through the frightened life of her remaining arm and webbed like a thousand screaming tendrils through her constricting chest. She doubled over, drawing vain, airless breaths which only deflated her further.

She balled her free hand to a fist and brought knuckles to her forehead, where the thin film of cold sweat seeped in to her fingerless glove. Visions. The crimson-addled beastmask. The grin of spite. The red gleam. A pulse in the slice, rippling with the slow, discomfiting tingle of the slowly-retreating tendrils. She flinched, a pressure in her face, cursing herself.

Why? The red goat was _dead_, his body swallowed and carried far away by the tranquil deluge its blood profaned—a shrouded masterwork of ruin, brought upon himself.

They had not wanted to do it—Blake, least of all. The ex-revolutionary might as well have stabbed in to her own heart. Love had been lost, but history remained. Mentorship. Companionship.

To kill the man who, at a time long ago, forged her... For him to force such a horrible choice out of her...

For him to just _be_ there, at her throat...

It was always _something_: a malignant claw or a red blade or the suffocating shadow of racial subjugation rooted most deeply and maliciously within the jaws of insatiable Atlesian military industry to which they now flew with uneasy leisure.

She had made it to her side, but only _just_. Now, the memory of Ruby's cry—_Blake!!_—except it sounded in Yang's head in her own voice. A powerless voice.

What about the next time, or the times after?

The queen has pawns—

"Y-... Yang...?" came a silky whisper. 

The breath in the blonde's throat finally attained its freedom, but weakly and in tiny waves. The tremor must have woken the concerned faunus. She could swear that she was sweating beads now. As if to confirm, a droplet fell to her lap and seeped in to her leather trousers. Her heart pounded frantically in fear of a faced past and shrouded future, but subsequent inhalations and expulsions from her nose smoothed out as she felt the worry of Blake's tender voice on her neck, the tightening of her dainty hand over her artificial-but-sophisticated facsimile, and the sympathy in her magnificent golden orbs cradling her entire being. She turned to finally answer them with her lilac pools, glazed with exhaustion.

The reality vastly outdid the expectant fantasy. The soft, red patches in her porcelain cheeks. The apprehensive little twitch of her ears. The opposite hand that wiped the cold sweat off the golden one's forehead. The way it settled on her cheek. The unfettered solicitude in the golden eyes surely reserved only for goddesses.

Yang blinked a few times, gradation returning to her own before they wandered to the floor, ashamed. In need of comfort, she leaned in to the soft hand.

Blake swallowed and pursed her lips, narrowing her eyes for a moment before she leaned in to rest shoulder on shoulder and forehead on forehead. They closed to stifle infant tears trying to escape from behind quivering lids. For her part, the blonde exhaled a dismal, shaky breath, but she could feel a warmth blanketing her heart—a warmth that could only have come from shadows. She brought her hand up to encompass Blake's with a squeeze—a near-perfect mirror image of the aftermath on the stone bridge by the waterfall.

They stayed that way for a long time. Soon, the flask ceased to exist. Then, the revving and clicking. The snoring. Eventually, even the low hum and the quiet dark of night as it finally pushed twilight away. All that was left was the warmth of Blake's touch. Their breathing. The faint beating of Yang's own heart in her head, relaxed as much as it could be in this circumstance, but still somewhat heightened and bombastic. This was Blake, after all, and even the emotional weariness she felt at their ordeal could not stifle the dumb happiness she remembered feeling at Beacon whenever the faunus girl consoled or confided in the golden one—the same happiness she felt now, after all that had happened.

"I'm so sorry..." came a shakier whisper.

Yang furrowed her brow.

"Don't," she softly retorted.

"But—"

"We take care of each other. No matter what. No matter when."

She paused, swallowing and then smiling, her eyes still closed.

"Thank you," she breathed.

"... Mm?"

"For coming back."

She exhaled the last of her anxious breaths.

"For being alive," she finished.

A tiny, fleeting whimper of tearful joy followed by a long, silent pause.

"... You too," exhaled the faunus through a weak voice. The heat of her breathing pierced so clean through Yang's heart that she felt it expand. She thought it would burst.

The hum and the rest of the gentle cacophony returned. Her eyes slowly opening, Yang put flesh and metal to Blake's warm and gorgeously round cheeks and wiped her tears away as they flowed down to open air. Despite herself, she marvelled at the golden orbs again, swelled with moisture and distress that were slowly dissipating. Perhaps somewhat irreverently for this situation, a question burned in her.

As Blake gradually calmed and her anxiety gave way to soft, cathartic breathing, Yang, even in her contemplation, hummed tentatively.

"What did he mean?" she voiced, absentmindedly.

An attentiveness washed over Blake's features as suddenly as a tidal wave.

"What...?" she breathed quizzically.

Yang snapped to attention herself, blinking apprehensively. She opened her mouth to respond, but closed it almost immediately as she tried to regain her bearings. She had not meant to ask that aloud. Her fatigue must have slowed her mind to a conflicting state of sober inebriation.

The golden one turned her eyes to the floor again.

"'What does she even see in you?!'" she recited quietly—a perplexing choice of final words for a wounded man merely a moment removed from the pardon of death. Yang waited a few seconds before returning her eyes to the glistening gold.

For their part, they would blink. It was their time to turn to the metal floor, the faunus' mouth closing. A smile so dazzlingly sweet as to dumb Yang to a stupor formed on her lips, gold gravitating back to lilac with an all-knowing expression of heart-swelling divinity slowly easing on to her features and cutting gingerly to the very _core_ of the brawler’s soul.

"The one thing he'd ever be right about," she evinced, angelically and mysteriously.

The hug came upon a Yang thoroughly staggered. She had heard the words, but the _processing_...

Her gaze fell to her clinging partner. She caught the excited tightness of her partner's chest against hers. A stifled laugh?

It ceased to matter in the face of the criminally engrossing softness of Blake's body against hers. And the scent of her hair...

Yang’s lips curled to what felt like the most contented smile she had ever worn. She melted, completely and utterly. The embrace she mustered in response was practically instinctual. Space, sound, and other diversions disappeared once more.

She decided to hold on to her partner through the starlit weave of night-time hours.


End file.
